Mandarin Chinese is a numeral classifier language. In Chinese, a numeral classifier is a free morpheme that obligatorily precedes a noun in a phrase of counting, such as "one stick" and "two tables." The Chinese equivalent of such phrases would be "one long-thing stick" and "two flat-thing tables," where "long-thing" and "flat-thing" represent classifier morphemes. Many believe that numeral classifiers define conceptual categories. Five experiments were conducted to test two hypotheses about their mental representation. Experiments 1, 2, 3 and 4 tested the main hypothesis that there are three different types of Chinese numeral classifier categories associated with three different types of mental representation. Twenty-four classifiers representing the three types were selected for the study. Native Chinese speakers were used as subjects. Experiment 1 generated grammaticality, typicality, and frequency ratings for nouns classified by the three types of classifiers. In Experiment 2, subjects listed central features for each classifier category studied. Experiment 3 reversed the experimental task in Experiment 2, asking subjects to identify the appropriate classifier categories based on the most frequently rated features generated in Experiment 2. Experiment 4 engaged subjects in judging how much each noun embodies the central idea of the classifier category. Data from these four experiments indicate that the three types of classifier categories have very different underlying organizing principles in their mental representation. Type 1 categories are characterized by a set of defining features, Type 2 categories are prototype-based, and Type 3 categories are Mentally represented by arbitrary associations. Experiment 5 was designed to test the second hypothesis that classifier categories may facilitate people's memory storage and recall. Both native Chinese speakers and English speakers served as subjects, with the English speakers being the control group. The data provided limited support for the idea that classifier categories act as an organization device in memory.

The book is about the numeral classifier system and the acquisition of Japanese classifiers by Japanese children. It consists of two parts. First, it provides a general typological characterization of numeral classifier phrases and discusses problems in determining what constitutes the nature of classifiers. It also discusses the semantic properties of numeral classifiers based on an analysis of four languages from four different language families. Second, it examines the acquisitions of Japanese numeral classifiers by Japanese preschool children, ages 3 to 6, with a primary emphasis on the development of comprehension. The importance of the study is that it reveals that young children have a much greater sensitivity to the conceptual underpinnings of the numeral classifier system than was previously considered to be the case. The research results also provide a converging source of evidence that young children often come to initially grasp the structure of the world in ways that are better understood in cognitive than perceptual terms. The implications will contribute to not only the area of language acquisition but also categorization and conceptual development.

Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.

This study examines the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on Chinese numeral classifiers (CNCs). NCs are ideally suited to exploring the link between language and semantic categorization, as classifier selection depends on the physical attributes of the associated noun (e.g., Mandarin zhi is used for long and rigid objects and tiao for long and flexible objects). Previous studies on numeral classifiers have addressed the language-cognition link by comparing the cognitive performance of monolingual as well as bilingual speakers of different languages (Lucy, 1992; Saalbach & Imai, 2005; Gao & Malt, 2009). In contrast, the present study sought to address the cognitive effects of numeral classifiers via a training study that investigated whether exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers' object categorization preferences, inhibitory control and memory retrieval. The participants of this study were 99 Native-English speaking College students. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group, which received training on four commonly used CNCs during the initial phase of the experiment, or a control group, which did not receive similar treatment during the initial phase. After the initial phase, the experimental group and the control group were assessed on a Forced Choice Task, a Go/No-Go Task and a Memory Task. A Mixed-design ANOVA indicated that the experimental group displayed a preference for objects sharing the same classifier in the Forced Choice Task and the Go/ No-Go Task (i.e. Go trials) when compared to the controls. The effect of exposure to numeral classifiers on inhibitory control was supported with a significantly lower false alarm rate (in the No-Go trials) for the experimental group. However, no group differences were observed in the results of the analysis of the participants' median reaction times in the Go/No-Go tasks. Similarly, the differences between the two groups' scores on the Memory Task was not found to be significant. The results of the study indicated that exposure to CNCs influenced Native-English speakers' categorization. The results also revealed partial support for the influence of exposure to CNCs on inhibitory processing, but not in the case of object clustering.

This book studies the syntax and semantics of numeral classifiers in Mandarin and other Chinese languages. It explores how Chinese classifiers are semantically interpreted in syntactic contexts and how semantic functions of classifiers are realized at the syntactic level. The book is a contribution to formal Chinese linguistics, and to the understanding of grammatical properties of nominal phrases in Chinese and East Asian languages.

In recent years, within research on the relationship between language and cognition, there has been growing interest in examining how language-specific features, such as Mandarin Chinese numeral classifiers (NCs), influence cognitive processing (Kuo & Sera, 2009; Srinivasan, 2010). This dissertation project aims to understand the impact of language learning on cognitive processing of categorization, inhibition, and count-mass distinction. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which potential moderator variables mediate the impact of language on the cognitive outcome measures. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of implicit and explicit instruction by assessing classifier knowledge transferability with delayed testing. In contrast, Experiment 2 examined cognitive processing (i.e., categorization and individuation) as a function of classifier language experience and the context of language exposure via a web-based research design. Experiment 1 (n = 128) indicated that participants that received classifier training display transferability of classifier knowledge in an object categorization task but did not demonstrate a relative advantage of one instructional method over another (i.e., explicit vs. implicit). Findings from Experiment 2 (n = 191) showed that speakers of one and two classifier languages (i.e., Chinese and Chinese-Malay speakers) have a significantly higher classifier-based object categorization preference and significantly lower proficiency in discriminating between count and mass nouns than the control group (English speakers). The Chinese speakers relied more strongly on size to differentiate count and mass nouns. Lastly, the findings combining the groups from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 suggested that language exposure (intensive lab-based vs. naturalistic long-term immersion) affects learner's performance on object categorization tasks. In summary, the instructional method and time of testing and language exposure played a significant role in language learning, retention, and transferability of classifier knowledge: This study has established a research program that systematically examines the effect of the learning of Chinese numeral classifiers on learners' cognitive performance. Understanding the interaction between the experience-based factors and the transferability of classifier knowledge advances our understanding of the dynamic experience of language learning.

The Semantics of Chinese Classifiers and Linguistic Relativity focuses on the semantic structure of Chinese classifiers under the cognitive linguistics framework, and the implications thereof on linguistic relativity and language acquisition. It examines the semantic correlation between a given classifier and its associated nouns. Nouns in Chinese, which are assigned specific classifiers according to their selected characteristics, reflect the process of human categorization. The concrete categories formed by the relationship between nouns and classifiers may serve to explain the conceptual structure of the Chinese language and certain underlying aspects of culture and human cognition. Song Jiang is Assistant Professor of Chinese for the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at university of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.